The Week in Review

This week has been busy! And randomly full of diabetes stuff.

Monday night, in lieu of weekly community band, I went to my JDRF chapter's mentor training meeting thing. There were about 30 of us there, and we took up all the chairs in the office. :P I met two adults who had been misdiagnosed with type 2; it's pretty surprising that it's that common. Besides that, there were a couple of 'twenty-somethings' (like 4?) and a couple other PWDs. Myself and a girl who was probably 8 were the only 'kids', but the parents of a couple of kids were also there and miscellaneous family members and such. It was nice to see some people who have done what I'm going to do [college *gasp*] and come out well.

Then there was school... Typical school, AP stats and ignorant teachers. Bleh. Dex has been high all day today, I think my site was dying, so I changed it... Still in the 300s.

Speaking of college, I was accepted to my second choice [if first choice doesn't give me enough scholarships] college, and they will give me $1500 a year just for showing up, and I can compete for their dean's award which is between 3-7k a year. Their total with room and board is like 20 (I think), and my first choice is 28k a year... I live really close to my second choice college, and could live at home and go for free pretty much with all the scholarship money I will probably get.

Thursday I went to a special 'diabetes technology' meeting and heard about the Revel and the Ping - decided for sure I'm getting the Ping, and will start with that process soon. I'm psyched about the 4th gen Dex, but not sure if I will upgrade to the Vibe when it comes out. I ate cookies too. There's a new purple MiniMed that I was jealous of. I didn't get to hear the OminPod guy because we had to leave...

TODAY WAS SENIOR TREAT DAY! There's a group of parents who put together a senior all nighter after graduation, and they also give us treats once a month, just for being seniors. Today it was apples and caramel, which I appreciated but I really wanted cake with a ridiculous amount of frosting. Maybe next time?

Homecoming decorating is coming up soon! I'm excited - pretty much the only thing I like about homecoming. We decorate the halls, each class gets one hall. We've won the past two years because my class is absolutely amazing. Our theme is TV channels, and we have Nickelodeon - the best one. (frosh - animal planet, soph - game show network, jun - A&E)

Sunday Afternoon Art

Art's affect on my blood sugar...

 A collection of pictures taken at the adventure that is ArtPrize; basically a whole bunch of art within walking distance of downtown. I inevitably went low and we spent about ten minutes sitting waiting for it to come back up.

Trying to take a picture at aforementioned blood sugar.

Not a velociraptor. The chicken dinosaur; actually shorter than me.

 Awesome angle courtesy of me.

Fabric-y thingy in a stairwell.

Laser levels are art!

Flowers in PVC pipe are art too!

I'm not insane, this lady is using painted cereal boxes for stuff too!

Looking up at one of my favorite pieces.. A 'waterfall' that spans three stories - totally awesome.

Perry the Platypus in disguise?

Stalker Post

 Wie geht's? Es ist Freitag!! Und am Freitag wir mussen tanzen. Tanzen!

If you know German you probably appreciated my silliness up there. If not, too bad so sad.
This post exists entirely so you may stalk me on many levels... Hmm, creepy.

Stalk me:
@jackiesgotd on Twitter
     This doesn't need explaining, I hope?
~hawkxs on DeviantART
     DA is a sort of art social network-y place. It's pretty cool. I only have a couple of d-related arts up, but if you enjoy fantasy, hockey, graphic design, Legos, and miscellaneous other things, you ought to take a look.
hawkxs on Last.fm
     Last.fm is a music listening/sharing site. I like it more than Pandora because a) add on for Firefox means no tab and automatic listening, and b) no ads and unlimited skipping. Plus you customize your stations to what you actually like, not what it thinks you might like. So stalk my whacked-out music tastes too!
hawkxs on flickr
     Oh hey! My flickr! With Legos and goalies! Nothing yet about diabetes, I've been meaning to do the D-365 thing for a while now...

Yep. And you can always e-mail me at jackiesdablog at gmail dot com.

Your Weekly Scheduled Picture Spam

 From the Walk on Saturday:

Roll Zone. I dunno what's rolling though.

Stalactites.

Tall Building

The back of my dad's head. And a random kid.

The magic line we followed through downtown.

I didn't know ents drove cars.

 Ugh, the pictures are obnoxious. Anyway, these last three are from this afternoon, when a flock of birds attacked the house. There were at least two hundred of them. They were really loud, but whenever you opened a door to take a picture they all flew away; there were enough of them to make a rather loud whooshing noise as they got up...

Creepy, I think.

Invisible Illness Week

I will get walk pictures up later.. Tomorrow, probably. I am suffering from eating too much food at the band picnic after the walk...

Invisible Illness Week is this week (today is also Constitution Day, so go read our rights as Americans!). Since everyone else has been doing this, and I love memes, I thought I would do it as well:

1. The illness I live with is: Type 1 Diabetes

2. I was diagnosed with it in the year:  Dec. 23rd, 2002

3. But I had symptoms since: November probably, but only really noticeable from the week leading up to d'x.

4. The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is: Remembering everything I eat and bolusing for it... And being really OCD about pop/juice and jello, things that may or may not be sugar free.

5. Most people assume:It's easy because they don't really see it...

6. The hardest part about mornings are: Eating something for breakfast.

7. My favorite medical TV show is: The only TV shows I really watch are Doctor Who and Top Gear. Neither are medical.

8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is: DexCom and/or meter.

9. The hardest part about nights are: DexCom going off and my mom force-feeding me fruit snacks because my blood sugar's like 80.

10. Each day I take 2 pills & 0 vitamins: Plus insulin.

11. Regarding alternative treatments I: There aren't any, Dr. Oz and all you liars!

12. If I had to choose between an invisible illness or visible I would choose: I know that I could have much worse illnesses and an invisible one is definitely what I would pick; I don't necessarily have to tell people about it if I don't want to.

13. Regarding working and career: I want to work for Animas or DexCom as a biomedical engineer. I haven't graduated high school yet, so I don't need to worry.

14. People would be surprised to know: I eat a lot of garbage despite diabetes... I really should eat better.

15. The hardest thing to accept about my new reality has been: Having to plan for instances.. Having fruit snacks everywhere, change for when I eat all the fruit snacks, carrying extra infusion sets and all kinds of junk around with me.

16. Something I never thought I could do with my illness that I did was: I dunno. I know only of a few things I can't do... Be a commercial airline pilot [which I don't want to be], join the military [which I don't want to; although I'm pretty sure if you were bent on it, they'd figure out something for you], or be an interstate truck driver [but I could be an intrastate truck driver. Go figure.] I've done a lot of stuff that normal people don't really do anyway, so I'm just awesome like that.

17. The commercials about my illness: Medical supply company ads are just annoying. I kind of like the OneTouch ones with BB King...

18. Something I really miss doing since I was diagnosed is: I don't really remember what life was like before, I was all of 8 years old.

19. It was really hard to have to give up: I dunno, again...

20. A new hobby I have taken up since my diagnosis is: Hockey, incidentally. I started playing in 6th grade, three years after my d'x.

21. If I could have one day of feeling normal again I would: Of being normal, you mean. I would go out and eat/drink a giant Mountain Dew Slurpee, try every flavor of Mountain Dew that I don't get to have, and get a giant ice cream/shake/flurry thing. 

22. My illness has taught me: How many carbs are in everything, how lucky I am to have this autoimmune illness and not others.

23. Want to know a secret? One thing people say that gets under my skin is: "My xxxx had that she died/had a leg cut off/is on dialysis/etc" - I don't care, and you're not helping.

24. But I love it when people: Ask questions, remember what I tell them, and pass it on.

25. My favorite motto, scripture, quote that gets me through tough times is: I'm a pessimist, so my quotes tend to be cynical and sarcastic... Probably mostly cynicism and sarcasm that gets me through the day.

26. When someone is diagnosed I’d like to tell them: You're not alone. Diet Mountain Dew is really good.

27. Something that has surprised me about living with an illness is: How rote it becomes. I just do x because I have to, whenever [change site, test, stab, etc.]

28. The nicest thing someone did for me when I wasn’t feeling well was: I don't get sick too often... My mom brought me a shake from Arby's the last time I was 'real-people sick' though.

29. I’m involved with Invisible Illness Week because: A whole bunch of blogger-y people did it too, and I thought it was cool.

30. The fact that you read this list makes me feel: Happy.

Tomorrow is the Walk!

I've been trying to write a blog post for the past three hours. This time it will finally get done. No distractions or anything.

So, the nifty things for the week.

We began discussing stuff in Anatomy and Physiology class this week. Of course, when we get to homeostasis, I know what's next: blood sugar regulation! So he draws a lovely sine wave and explains it to everyone else in the class, and I give the hormone that my body doesn't make: insulin. I wanted to show off my Dex, but I hadn't eaten anything lately so there wasn't a spike or anything.

Today in AP Stats we conducted an experiment. To my dismay, it involved regular pop. Plain old Coke and Caffeine free Coke; the experiment was to see if caffeine affects pulse rate; it doesn't... At least for this group of high schoolers. I'm pretty sure this is only the second or third time I've had regular pop in a long while [like five years], and possibly the first time I've had regular coke since d'x. I tend to go for Mountain Dew when there's nothing diet, and SWAG the heck out of it. I'm pretty good at that, and it helps that that only happens at school dances and such where there's a good amount of activity.

And for the record, you can taste the lack of caffeine in caffeine free coke. And Coke is disgusting anyway, for someone attuned to Coke Zero, Diet Coke, and Diet Mountain Dew [the best stuff in the world!].

And some other things... The JDRF walk is tomorrow, I will probably have raised about $1,000 for the fourth year in a row (thanks everybody!). I will also be wearing my ren fest garb; it'll be a perfect day for that, as it won't be too hot. I'm looking forward to grilling the Animas guy about the Vibe again, and will let you know how that goes.

I kind of completely ignored Invisible Illness Week... But I think it's a super-important thing and should get to doing the lovely meme sometime.

TOMORROW IS CONSTITUTION DAY!

That is all.

Today is Tuesday

And I haven't updated anything since Friday. There's this thing called school. It gets in the way of a lot of things.

And I had something interesting and/or relevant to say, and now it's gone.

Let's find a picture...

This is a test strip stuck to a vertical surface, the post on my loft.

Lazy Friday

I have issues with picking the scar thingies off my fingertips...

 Thus a pile of pictures for your viewing pleasure.

This is why I hate leg sites.

What I'm reading right now.

FFFFFFFFUUUUUU

On the first day of my senior year, no less.

Yep.

This was a couple of weeks ago. I was reading 'The Story of Insulin', which is like a 40 year old book and 'A Little Bit Longer' happened to be playing on my mp3. A day in the life of a PWD... Can't ignore silly little diabetes coincidences.

Lauren's Hope Bracelet!

 My medical alert bracelet came today in the mail. I was pretty impatient for it to get here, and it was definitely worth the wait.

The one I got [giveaway from D-Mom Blog!] is the Undercover style. It's stainless steel and is pretty sturdy; I think I could *almost* run it over with a car and it'd be fine.

It came in a little bubble mailer in a little bag [see pic]. It's a little bit heavy, but I'll get used to it quickly, I think. It fits perfectly. My only thought is that you do have to remove this bracelet to see what I've got; (:P) I had it engraved with my name, Type 1 Diabetes, and 'See Wallet Card' - in case I change phone numbers, etc.  It came with a nifty, detailed card that I then filled out, to carry around with me.

Clearly I can't take pictures very well. I think my blood sugar was a little low.

The Endo.

Ironically, my endo appointment was also on Diabetes Art Day [see my previous post]. In my opinion, the news I have to share here is more important than my lame attempt at sculpture, so I'm posting this last.

We get in, I do the test your meter stuff; it says 147 [yay!]. I hand the nurse my pump and dex, and my endo comes in shortly thereafter. They've got nifty computers now, so there's not someone who knocks on the door and tells you your A1c anymore [slightly disappointing].

My last one, three months ago, was 7.2. Pretty good considering I'm 17; my endo's always loved me. I wanted a 6 in the first place though, and that was my 'goal' when I talked to the RN at the last appointment.

She asked me what I thought it was. I said I wanted a 6 in the first place. She said there was. I was excited. Then she had me guess the decimal... I said 7 or 8 and she said lower... MY A1C WAS 6.5! It's never been that low!

Just after I was dx'd (on MDI) [after Christmas and the garbage that my bg had been ridiculous 'cause I didn't know I had d] I managed ones in 6.8 and 6.7, mostly because of my parents OCDness and me not eating anything that wasn't free or that I wasn't 'scheduled' to eat.

But 6.5 is awesome. And my endo said so. Then she pretty much decided I didn't need anything else and was going to let us leave (this ended up only being like a 30min appointment) but we had school paperwork and needed a scrip for glucagon. Then we asked for the social worker to come talk to us about a 'new technology' workshop thing they're doing in October, since my pump warranty is up in December. I'm looking forward to that. The lady who we talked to also does a discussion group thing for kids with diabetes, and I'm going to go to the one she has in the fall, and maybe present my stuff [for my gold award] at the one they do in the winter. I'm pretty psyched about it.

SIX POINT FIVE! YEAH!

Diabetes Art Day!

This is my submission. Yes, it is not particularly creative, but I've got other things in the works [eventually.] Bonus cookie for you if you know what the containers are from:

Four months' or so of Humalog, the stuff that keeps me alive.